For most families, blending households comes with enough moving parts of its own.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!But for Christie and Wesley Werts, it ended up becoming something far bigger.
What started as two families coming together through marriage has grown into an extraordinary story of loss, resilience, selfless love, and a decision that has touched the hearts of millions online — after Christie adopted the baby of her husband’s late ex-wife to stop him being placed in the foster care system.
The Ohio couple first met five years ago and built their blended family by bringing together Christie’s two children, Megan and Vance, and Wesley’s children from his previous relationship, Austin and Dakota.
But in 2021, everything changed.
Wesley’s ex-wife gave birth prematurely to a baby boy at 33 weeks. Just days later, she died following a stroke, with complications linked to addiction and Covid, PEOPLE reports.
The newborn, Levi, was suddenly left without a mother — and without stability.
At the time, Levi was made a ward of the state and, incredibly, had no first name or birth certificate.
For Christie, the decision came instantly.
“When I heard about Levi, without hesitation, I said we should take him,” she said, per the The Daily Mail.
And while Levi was already the half-brother of Austin and Dakota, Christie’s motivation ran even deeper than family ties.
Having grown up in foster care herself, she knew exactly what that life could look like.
“I myself was a foster kid and, although for the most part, I had a great experience, I did not want him going to foster care,” Christie said.
That personal history had shaped much of her adult life.
For years, Christie had no intention of becoming a foster parent. “A lot of people think because you were a foster kid, ‘Oh, do you want to be a foster parent when you grow up?’ I’m like, ‘Nope,’” she explained. “I had no intentions, but that was probably the foster kid in me talking, not the adult woman talking.”
But when Levi arrived, those old walls collapsed quickly.
“How I felt, my emotions, my trauma — the love for this child just trumped everything. I would’ve done anything for him,” she revealed.
The decision would trigger a life-changing chain of events.
Levi was born in Texas, while the family was based in Ohio. In order to begin the adoption process, Christie and Wesley sold their home and relocated entirely to Texas.
And it wouldn’t be quick.
Levi’s biological father still held parental rights despite struggling with substance abuse, meaning the Werts family could not leave the state until those rights were legally terminated.
The legal process dragged on for 16 months. But through it all, Christie says there was never any turning back. Even so, she admits she had fears.
“’If I said I did not [have concerns beforehand], that would not be honest,” she said. “This was different — I was going to walk into a child I never met and was worried the circumstances would hinder this instant love. But […] he stole my heart. I also felt this intense need to protect him.”
That instinct to protect Levi felt strangely familiar.
Before she even knew he existed, Christie says she’d been having recurring dreams about a blonde-haired, blue-eyed little boy.
At the time, she and Wesley had been considering trying for a child of their own.
“Before Levi, we had wanted to try to have a child of our own,” she said. “I’m in my forties, so we knew that we would probably need fertility treatment, so I thought let’s just think about it and what will be will be.”
Looking back now, it feels like fate intervened in a way neither of them could have predicted.
In January 2023, just before Levi turned two, the adoption was officially finalised.
He was finally home.
Now aged four and turning five in August, Levi has settled into life as the youngest — and, according to Christie, the boss — of the house.
“He’s great, he is the king of the house! We are all very close,” she says.
And while Levi is still too young to understand everything that happened, Christie knows one day he’ll learn just how hard his family fought for him. She explained: “He won’t understand the journey right now, but someday, I will let him know we fought for him!”
The emotional journey also became unexpectedly healing for Christie.
To qualify as Levi’s foster parent, she had to go through interviews and training — a process that forced her to revisit her own childhood trauma.
“I was nervous because I thought if I told them why I ended up in foster care, would they think something’s wrong with me? And it starts making you think about your trauma,” she said. “It was a little bit of a healing and emotional time having to become a foster parent when you were a former foster kid.”
Since then, Christie has shared the family’s journey in her book Life’s Sad Story, God’s Love Story: Transforming a Child’s Adversity into a Tale of Love, as well as on TikTok, where their story has gone viral.
One video alone, showing Wesley spending time with Levi, pulled in over 700,000 likes.
In it, Christie wrote: “Watching my husband with his [ex-wife’s] baby. He adopted him after she passed so he wouldn’t go to foster care.”
And in the caption, she made sure her husband got credit too: “The news stories always share me stepping up. But my husband also did!”
For Christie, telling the story publicly has always been about showing what love can do — even in the most complicated circumstances.
“I wanted to bring awareness and compassion,” she explained, “how far love will go and how resilient a human spirit can be.”
And perhaps most strikingly of all, Christie says she often thinks about Levi’s biological mother – even though they never met.
“Even though I never met [Levi’s] bio mom, I think about her all the time,” she says. “I know that she had struggles, but she’s a mom too. […] I just wanted to make sure that her children were loved and taken care of.”
It’s a story that sounds almost impossible when laid out on paper. But for the Werts family, it wasn’t complicated. It was simply love making the only choice it could. What a truly amazing couple.
Featured image credit: TikTok/@@cjthemom5 (screenshots)
